1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to electronic components. More particularly, the present invention relates to a passive device structure and method for fabricating the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
To decrease electronic component size, passive devices, e.g., inductors, resistors, and capacitors, are being integrated into the top metal/dielectric layers of integrated circuit chips. As the feature size of these passive devices is small, small variations in manufacturing result in substantial variation in the values of the passive devices.
To illustrate, small variations in the thickness of the conductive layer of a resistor results in a large variation in the sheet resistance of the resistor. As another example, small variations in the thickness of the dielectric layer of a capacitor results in a large variation in the Q value of the capacitor. These variations in the values of the passive devices may be unacceptable depending upon the application.